Posts tagged ‘Corruption’
The Scandals Keep Coming
It’s far better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust any human. It’s far better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust any human leader. (Psalm 118:8-9)
If there were ever words we needed to read, re-read, and take to heart in the chaos of our heady political milieu, it would be these. Our human leaders fail us again and again – time after time, leader after leader, politician after politician.
The latest political failures come conveniently in both a left and a right form – a liberal scandal and a conservative one. On the liberal side, there is U.S. Senator Al Franken from Minnesota, who was revealed to have groped a radio newscaster during a 2006 U.S.O. tour. The senator has issued an apology, but there are already questions boiling under the surface as to whether or not this kind of behavior was common for him.
On the conservative side, there is the candidate for the U.S. Senate, Judge Roy Moore from Alabama, who stands accused making unwanted advances at female teenagers in the early 80s and, according to the two most serious allegations, sexually assaulting one girl who, at the time, was 14 and attacking another girl who, at the time, was 16, by squeezing her neck and attempting to force her head into his groin. Judge Moore was in his 30s when the alleged assaults took place and he has denied the allegations.
Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer have called for an investigation of Senator Franken by the Senate Ethics Committee, a move which Senator Franken himself supports. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have called on Judge Moore to drop out of the Alabama Senate race, with some interesting exceptions. Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler defended the judge’s alleged actions using what can only be described as a tortured – and, it must be added, an incorrect and incoherent –theological logic, saying:
Take the Bible – Zechariah and Elizabeth, for instance. Zechariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also, take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.
Alabama Representative Mo Brooks defended Judge Moore more straightforwardly by calculating the political cost of electing a Democrat to the Senate instead of a firebrand conservative like the judge. He said:
America faces huge challenges that are vastly more important than contested sexual allegations from four decades ago … Who will vote in America’s best interests on Supreme Court justices, deficit and debt, economic growth, border security, national defense, and the like? Socialist Democrat Doug Jones will vote wrong. Roy Moore will vote right. Hence, I will vote for Roy Moore.
Whether among Democrats or Republicans, it seems as though the stakes on every election, every seat, every position, and every appointment – yea, every scrap of political power – have become sky high. A national apocalypse, it can feel like, is only one political loss away.
New York Times columnist David Brooks recently bemoaned how our perceived astronomical political stakes have turned politics itself into an idol for many in our society. He wrote:
People on the left and on the right who try to use politics to find their moral meaning are turning politics into an idol. Idolatry is what happens when people give ultimate allegiance to something that should be serving only an intermediate purpose, whether it is money, technology, alcohol, success or politics.
In his column, Mr. Brooks quotes Andy Crouch, who is the executive editor at Christianity Today, and his excellent description of what idols do in his book Playing God:
All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initially seemed so reasonable, for worship and sacrifice. In the end they fail completely, even as they make categorical demands. In the memorable phrase of the psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, idols ask for more and more, while giving less and less, until eventually they demand everything and give nothing.[1]
This is most certainly true. All idols fail. This means that if we fancy our politicians to be saviors who can rescue us from the wiles of our political opponents and some looming national apocalypse, those for whom we vote will inevitably fail – sometimes modestly by an inability to pass key legislation, and other times spectacularly in some grave moral collapse. Senator Franken and Judge Moore are just the latest examples of this.
David French, in a recent article for National Review concerning the Judge Moore scandal, wrote simply, “There is no way around dependence on God.” These scandals serve to remind us of this profound truth. The fact that our politicians fail should grieve us, as sin always should, but it should not scare us. After all, even if a national apocalypse should come, it is still no match for the Apocalypse, when, instead of a politician, a perfect Potentate will appear to set the world right. That’s not an apocalypse of which to be scared; that’s an apocalypse by which to be comforted. I hope you are.
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[1] Andy Crouch, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press), 56
Venezuelan Victims
As our national attention is riveted on a myriad of local stories, most of which are political in nature, the people of Venezuela are languishing. In what is perhaps one of the most underreported stories of this year, Venezuelans are on the brink of staging an all out revolt. Tensions are so high in this volatile South American nation that even the future of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is uncertain.
A confluence of calamities has brought the country to the brink of collapse. Plummeting crude oil prices have pilfered Venezuela’s economy and a severe drought has strained the nation’s hydroelectric power supply, forcing the government to enact rolling blackouts and enforce a two-day work week just to save power. Along with these troubles, food is becoming scarce and medical care is becoming even poorer than it already was. A headline from The New York Times says it all: “Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals.”
Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis is something that deserves and demands our attention and thoughtfulness. There are lessons to be learned here.
We can learn that corruption – no matter how powerful it may seem for a season – cannot stand. Like Hugo Chavez before him, Mr. Maduro is a corrupt head of a corrupt government. By one count, government officials there have stolen some $350 billion public tax dollars, using them to line their personal pockets. Outside economic factors certainly play a roll in Venezuela’s high poverty rate, but the government isn’t helping matters. Venezuela’s politicians are stealing from their own people, taxing them into poverty while they live in luxury. And the people have had enough. And they are revolting.
The apostle Paul reminds us that the government is “that which God has established” (Romans 13:1). And this is certainly true. God establishes governing authorities and we are to respect and pray for them. But, to borrow a phrase from Job, “The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away” (Job 1:21). If history is any indication, the Lord has no problem wresting power from governments that would misuse and abuse their authority against their own people. And the Venezuelan government’s turn for downfall – with Mr. Maduro at its head – may be coming soon.
It is also important to point out that human crises, no matter how foreign or far away they may seem from our perspective, cry out for our compassion and attention. Scenes of cold incubators and critically wounded people in squalid conditions betray not only the incompetence and corruption of a government that demands our repudiation, but the pain and fear of a people who deserve our compassion. Stories of people’s pain – even if they’re a hemisphere away – demand our engagement.
All this is to say that Venezuela needs a change. What is happening there now cannot continue. Americans, understandably, have not been all too friendly with the Venezuelan government. And this is wise. Cozying up to corruption, after all, only breeds and makes one complicit in further corruption. Furthermore, sending relief to the Venezuelan people is complicated. What we send often ends up in the wrong hands. But even with these complicating factors, the Venezuelan people are hurting. And as such, they deserve our notice – and our prayers.
May they find the relief, the resources, and the freedom they seek.
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